Friday, April 4, 2014

New slice-of-life short story collection coming soon!

I originally announced this on my author FB page, but I'll also post it here.

November 2011 was my very first attempt at NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). My project was a short story collection with slice-of-life stories all based around a certain event. They all took place in a small and quiet town shaken to its core when a little girl is found murdered and abused. The stories involve adults and kids, dealing with the tragedy. I ended up writing a second draft las...t year, but because real life got involved (and got too real at times), I ended up putting it off for a while and worked on Giggles instead.

After reading Alice Munro these past few months, I decided it was time to revisit the collection and finally finish the second draft. I've sent a very rough version of it to some readers I trust (and who loved my collection In Decline) to see if it was worth going forward. So far, I've heard really good things and it looks like it's going to be a reality sooner rather than later.

Sorry for the long post. But that's what I've been up to with my writing! I'm really excited about this. It feels great to work on slice-of-life stories again. I loved writing horror, but this will always be my true love when it comes to writing.
 
I'm not sure when this will all be completed, but as I've said I don't expect it to take too long. My goal is to have this done within the next few months. Before the end of the year for sure, but I really think it'll be sooner than that.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Reading and writing... and more reading

Even though I haven't had time to do a lot of writing, I've been reading a lot. I think one of the best things you can do when you're not writing is to read. You never know what's going to inspire you. Or give you that creative bug you thought was long, long gone.

After reading a bunch of Alice Munro stories lately (she has become my new favorite short story writer), I'm going back to a short story collection I started a few years back. I've finally finished a second draft. Now, I'm just editing and tightening it before I send it some readers for overall opinions. It's a slice-of-life collection where all of the stories are in a way connected--yet they work on their own.

I know I don't blog here on much, but you can follow me on BookLikes. I post there. A ton. Mostly about books, and sometimes other things. I hope you'll follow me at http://michaelcrane.booklikes.com/.

Sorry I don't post here often. I'll try to do that more, but as you know I'm not very good when it comes to talking about myself, or what I've been up to. But I love to talk about what I'm reading, so that's why I'm so active over there.